To knock our selves into shape, we need the diversion ahead right here-and-now. It is not so much a detour away from scipio's, as a retroversion, back to chapter 3. This will be a sample of ‘Making like the bees’.

For if the bareback Catonesque jaunt of 87 forces the reader to relive the earlier jolt along the shoreline ‘between Cumae and the mansion of Vatia’, the bare bones of the ‘location’ of 86 already refer us back, no room for doubt, to the ‘manor’ contemplated there.

Discussion of vatia's comes next, then (chapter 8).

After presentation of its text + translation:

SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM

A gestatione cum maxime uenio, non minus fatigatus quam si tantum ambulassem quantum sedi; labor est enim et diu ferri, ac nescio an eo maior quia contra naturam est, quae pedes dedit ut per nos ambularemus, oculos ut per nos uideremus. debilitatem nobis indixere deliciae, et quod diu noluimus posse desimus.

mihi tamen necessarium erat concutere corpus, ut, siue bilis insederat faucibus, discuteretur, siue ipse ex aliqua causa spiritus densior erat, extenuaret illum iactatio, quam profuisse mihi sensi. ideo diutius uehi perseueraui inuitante ipso litore, quod inter Cumas et Seruili Vatiae uillam curuatur et hinc mari, illinc lacu uelut angustum iter cluditur. erat autem a recenti tempestate spissum; fluctus enim illud, ut scis, frequens et concitatus exaequat, longior tranquillitas soluit, cum harenis, quae umore alligantur, sucus abscessit.